


En avant

by thankyouturtle



Series: Day in the Life [5]
Category: Batgirl (Comic), DCU - Comicverse
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Child Abuse, Dancing, Family, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-17
Updated: 2011-12-17
Packaged: 2017-10-27 11:18:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,109
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/295235
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thankyouturtle/pseuds/thankyouturtle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cass Cain is the newest member of the Wayne family - but not all of the changes in her life are easy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	En avant

**Author's Note:**

> **Trigger warning** for mentions of child abuse.

Everyone was surprised at how quickly Cass settled in to school, and that included Cass herself. The last year's worth of uncertainty meant that she was a whole grade below the other kids her age, but that just meant she was in the same class as Tim, who was a whole grade above most of *his* peers. Cass liked learning, found the structure of classes and breaks and free periods more familiar than alien. She liked the school uniform, with the thick-shouldered jacket called a blazer and pleated skirt that allowed her to move however she wanted.

The only thing she couldn't really get a hang of was other people. She'd been taught to see other girls strictly as rivals, not potential friends, and while she'd always secretly yearned for a friend or two, now that she had the opportunity to befriend anyone she wanted to she found she just didn't know how. At first, she had hopefully spent her free time and lunch-breaks sitting with Tim; all his friends were nice enough, but Cass didn't know how to join in with their jokes and arguments.

Eventually she found that she was just sitting by herself. It wasn't any better than sitting with other people, but it didn't seem much worse, either.

***

Cass' therapist told her that her speech problems were just a symptom of her childhood, that now that now things were getting better she may find, in time, that she'd no longer be stumbling over her words. Cass wondered if she should tell her therapist that of all the scars she'd been left with, that one bothered her the least. Yes, she spoke slowly, sometimes her sentences so disjointed that it frustrated her listeners, but her training had left her with something that others didn't have - the ability to pick up on little signals in body language, a twitch of the hands here, a lean there, that told her more than words could ever do.

The first time Jay came to sit with her she was staring intently at a stocky, dark-haired boy, talking intently to his blonde girlfriend.

"Admiring the goods?" Jay asked. It sounded like a sneer, but Cass was starting to get used to him, and she thought that this was just his way of saying hello

"They're not... very happy," she told him. Jay looked at her, then glanced back to where Connor Kent and Cassie Sandsmark were holding hands and gazing into each other's eyes.

"Really?" he asked doubtfully.

"When they... smile at each other, they don't smile with... their eyes," Cass explained.

"Huh." Jay dumped his schoolbag onto the ground and gazed at Cass with something approaching admiration. "You're a real dark horse, aren't you, little Sis?" It was the first time Jay had called her his sister, but what might have been a nice moment was ruined by him reaching up and tugging on her hair. Cass responded by executing a grand battement right into Jay's stomach. "And a quick learner," he wheezed from the ground.

"Quicker... than you," she told him, but they were both smiling with their eyes.

***

"Have you thought about taking up dancing again?" Dick asked her one evening. She'd been sitting in her room, struggling with her English homework, until he came in and sat down beside her with an annotated copy of Macbeth. He'd recited some of Lady Macbeth's lines to Cass in falsetto, making her giggle, and for a moment she'd felt so warm and happy that the question was like a cold hand running down her spine.

"Dancing?" she repeated.

"I was wondering if you miss it," Dick explained, and he looked as though he was sorry he had brought the subject up. Cass reached out and tentatively put a hand on his arm, trying to show that she wasn't that hurt by the question.

"I always wanted to dance... before," she said, sure that Dick would know what the *before* was, "But I don't know if... it was what I wanted or what... _he_ wanted."

"And dancing still reminds you of him - of your father," Dick suggested, and Cass nodded, surprised that he understood so well. He gave her a sympathetic grin, and said, "It's not quite the same thing, you know, but I only just went back to a circus for the first time last year. The ringmaster knew my parents before they died, and he let me up on the trapeze. I'd forgotten how good it felt to fly through the air like that. But at the same time..." He shrugged. "When I was little, I knew I was always going to be an acrobat. My parents wouldn't've forced me, if I hadn't wanted to, but it was the only life I knew - the circus was my whole world!"

"What do... you want to do now?"

Dick leaned back against the wall, looking thoughtful. "I don't know. I'd love to do something in the way that Bruce does, you know - reaching out to kids that need it. Not that I'll ever have his kind of money. But Babs' old man is a cop, and he's been telling me stories - I don't know. Being an officer could be OK."

"Don't tell... Jay," Cass suggested, and Dick laughed. Jay had been sharing his views on the police at dinner, and they weren't particularly complimentary.

"Anyway, all I really meant was that you don't need to feel like you have to become someone completely new, just 'cos you're living here now. Bruce won't make you do anything you don't want to, but - you shouldn't feel shy about asking for things you do want." Dick shut his Macbeth and handed it to her, wished her good night and left. Cass was grateful both for the book and for Dick's words, but something about what he'd said made her feel uneasy. She thought hard about it while she got ready for bed, but it wasn't until the next morning that she managed to figure out what it was.

When Dick talked about what he wanted to do with his life - he was talking about the _future_. It was something that he was going to do later, not something that he wanted to do now. Cass's life had _always_ been about the now. She had to practice, now. She had to audition, now. She had to be the best dancer of her generation - _now_. There'd always been a sense of urgency to what she had done, and it was true that that urgency had been part of the reason for her friendlessness. But she'd also had a sense of purpose, and even though life was better now - she was happier now, _safer_ now - there wasn't any purpose.

"Oh my God," Jay said dramatically at lunch. "You've got the Wayne curse." Cass was at least a little used to him, now, so she calmly continued to eat her fries as he went on, "I may have happened to have overheard last night a certain conversation between _toi_ and dear Richard-"

"You were listening," Cass corrected him. Jay continued on as if she hadn't interrupted.

"-and I can tell you it's only a matter of time now before it takes a hold of you."

Cass finished chewing her fry, took a sip of her juice, swallowed, and asked, "What... are you talking about?"

"The Wayne curse! It happens to all of us. You're just, you know, a normal kid who maybe happens to have been in juvie once or twice, and then suddenly you're adopted by a billionaire and you start caring about other people. It's fucking shitty, I'm telling you."

"You were... in juvie?"

Jay waved a hand. "Don't try and put me off, I'm just telling you not to become a social worker. That would be encroaching on my territory."

It took Cass a little while, but by the time the bell rang for her next class she had managed to untangle what Jay was saying. That he, like Dick, wanted to be like Bruce, to help kids left without people to look after them. He wasn't going to do it the same way that Dick was, or Bruce was, but he was going to do it all the same - and he assumed that Cass would, one day, too.

She thought he was probably right. She just wasn't sure about the "one day" part of it.

***

Even though he was friendly, Tim was a lot quieter than Dick or Jay. She'd been living with them for almost four months before he mentioned anything about his own history, and so it was only then that Cass realised there were more differences between her and the others than simply her being the only girl.

But really, it made sense, when she thought about it. So much of the time between the company's guest artist tentatively asking her about the marks on her back and the time she was told she'd be going to live at Wayne Manor had just been - confusing. She knew there'd been lawyers and journalists and police and social workers and doctors, and there'd been questions and questions about who and where her mother was and whether there wasn't anyone, surely there was someone, she'd liked to stay with? For all three of the boys, the answers had been easy. None of them had had anybody left to take care of them; none of them had a father who had somehow managed to leave the country, leaving the question of custody of his daughter up in the air.

How many children were there out there that Bruce couldn't have helped if he'd tried? Who had parents still around - and who didn't have any one notice that their parents weren't up to the job? And how could she, how _could_ she wait until she'd left school to help the kids who were like her? She wondered if this was something she should talk about with her therapist, but Cass remembered what Dick had said. If there was anything she wanted...

Bruce was in his office, reading through a thick folder of papers, but he dropped it as soon as she tapped at the door. "Cassandra," he said, but he was welcoming her, and she went forward to his desk and stood, fingertips resting on one of his paper-weights.

"I want," she began, and then stopped. There were too many words, and she wasn't at all certain she could get them all out. "I want to help," she tried. "Kids... stuck. Like me." She licked her lips, feeling frustrated at her own inability at explaining something so important. "The ones... that can't help themselves."

"You want to do something to help other kids in bad situations?" Bruce asked. He said it slowly, as if trying to make sure both of them knew what the other meant, and Cass gave a happy sigh.

"Yes."

"Good," he said crisply, and passed her the folder of papers. She looked down at it, then back up at him, not understanding at all what he wanted. "I'm starting a scholarship," he explained, "for kids like you. Just one, at first, to see how it goes. I can't take every child who needs help out of their home," and his mouth curled as if he was eating something bitter, "because money can't buy justice. But I can offer them a chance. Better education - more opportunities. And I can have the right people keeping their eyes open to make sure things don't get too bad at home."

Cass opened the folder flipped through the first few pages. They were notes on kids - on kids like her, the ones that couldn't escape their parents. "You want me to - choose?" she asked, still unsure. Unsure, too, how she was supposed to pick one kid when there were so many in need.

"To help me choose, this time," Bruce said. "Next time, if you like, you can select someone by yourself. But what I'd also like, if you really want to do something, is to think of way the Wayne Foundation can help _more_ children - many at once, I mean, not just one at a time. Is that something you'd be interested in?"

They sat up together for some time, reading slowly through the files Bruce had, until they found someone they both agreed needed a scholarship like the one Bruce proposed, a girl just a little younger than Cass. Then Cass said good night, feeling that while one wasn't enough, it was a start. It was the beginning of a purpose.

She did great leaping _pas de cheval_ all the way back to her room.


End file.
